Archive for the ‘kris medlen’ tag

(Editor’s Note: sorry for the tardiness on this post: I had it completely written and a WordPress or browser glitch lost 1,000 words of analysis. So it took a bit of time to cobble back together what I had originally written. Then the Souza trade hit, then the Cuban thing … and this got pushed).

What a GM Meeting week! As one of the Fangraphs guys noted, there were so many transactions, so fast, that he literally gave up trying to write individual analysis pieces and went to a running diary of sorts. I was amazed at the number of significant deals and trades made, especially when it came to starters. So lets take a look at who shook things up.

Chicago White Sox: acquired Jeff Samardzija in Oakland’s fire sale to go with established ace Chris Sale, the highly underrated Jose Quintana. From there the White Sox have question marks: John Danks is just an innings eater at this point and Hector Noesi was not effective in 2014. But the White Sox have one of the brightest SP prospects in the game at AAA in Carlos Rodon (their fast-rising 2014 1st round pick) and their former #1 prospect Erik Johnson (who struggled in his debut in 2014 but has a good minor league track record). So by the latter part of 2015 the White Sox could be a scary team for opposing offenses to face.

Minnesota: just signed Ervin Santana to join a rotation containing the rejuvinated Phil Hughes, the decent Ricky Nolasco and first rounder Kyle Gibson. If they (finally) call up former Nats 1st rounder Alex Meyer to fill out the rotation and replace the dregs that gave them #4 and #5 rotation spot starts last year, they could be significantly improved. Of course, the problem they face is the fact that they’re already playing catchup in the AL Central and still look like a 5th place team in this division.

Los Angeles Angels: adroitly turned one year of Howie Kendrick into six years of Andrew Heaney, who should thrive in the big AL West parks. If the Angels get a healthy Garrett Richards back to go along with the surprising Matt Shoemaker, they may have a surplus of decent arms being stalwards Jered Weaver and C.J. Wilson.

Miamihas spent some cash this off-season, but they’ve also gone shopping and upgraded their rotation significantly. After acquiring the decent Jarred Cosart at the trade deadline, they’ve flipped bit-players to acquire Mat Latos, added Dan Haren and a $10M check while parting ways with the unproven youngster Andrew Heaney, and should get ace Jose Fernandez back by June 1st if all goes well with his TJ rehab. Add to that Henderson Alvarez and the Marlins look frisky (their new-found depth enabled them to move Nathan Eovaldi to the Yankees). Rumors are that Haren won’t pitch unless he’s in SoCal, but $10M is an awful lot of money to turn up your nose at. This is an improved rotation no doubt, and the rest of the Marlins lineup looks good too.

New York Metsget Matt Harvey back. Enough said. Harvey-Jacob deGrom is one heck of a 1-2 punch.

Chicago Cubs: added an ace in Jon Lester, re-signed their own effective starter in Jason Hammel, and will add these two guys to the resurgent Jake Arrieta. Past that you have question marks: Kyle Hendricks looked great in 2014. And the Cubs gave nearly 60 starts last year to Travis Wood (5+ ERA) and former Nat Edwin Jackson (6+ ERA). I could envision another SP acquisition here and the relegation of Wood & Jackson to the bullpen/AAA/scrap heap.

Pittsburghwas able to resign Francisco Liriano and get A.J. Burnett for an under-market deal. This should keep them afloat if they end up losing Edinson Volquez in free agency. Otherwise they have decent back of the rotation guys and will get back Jamison Taillon perhaps in the early part of the year. This could help them get back to the playoffs with the anticipated step-back of NL Central rivals Cincinnati.

Los Angeles Dodgerssaid good bye to a stable of starters (Josh Beckett, Chad Billingsly, Kevin Correia, Dan Haren, Roberto Hernandez and Paul Maholm are all either FAs or have been traded away) and signed a couple of guys to go behind their big three of Kershaw, Greinke and Ryu who could quietly make a difference (Brandon McCarthy and Brett Anderson) if they remain healthy. That’s a bigger “if” on Anderson than McCarthy, who excelled once leaving the circus that Arizona was last year before the management house cleaning and should continue to excel in the huge park in LA. Were I Andrew Friedman, I’d re-sign at least a couple of these FA guys for 5th starter insurance … but then again, the Dodgers also have a whole slew of arms in AAA that could be their 5th starter. Or they could just open up their wallets again; there’s still arms to be had. Nonetheless, replacing 32 Haren starts with McCarthy will bring immediate benefits, and whoever they end up with as a 5th starter has to be better than the production they got last year out of that spot.

Team most improved: likely the Cubs.

What teams’ rotations have taken step backs or are question marks heading into 2015?

Boston: after trading away most of their veteran rotation last season, the Red Sox seem set to go into 2015 with this rotation: Clay Buchholz, Rick Porcello, Justin Masterson, Joe Kelly and Wade Miley. This rotation doesn’t look as good as it could be; Buchholz was awful in 2014, Porcello is good but not great, Masterson the same, Kelly seems like a swingman, and Miley has back to back 3.98 FIP seasons in the NL and will see some ERA inflation in the AL (though not as much as normal since Arizona is a hitter’s park). But Boston’s entire AAA rotation are among their top 10 prospects, so there’s plenty of depth they could use in trade or as reinforcements.

Detroit: Arguable if they’ve really taken a “step back,” but you have to question their direction. In the last two off-seasons they’ve traded away Doug Fister, Rick Porcello, Drew Smyly, prospect Robbie Ray and have (seemingly) lost Max Scherzer to free agency so that they can go into 2015 with this rotation: David Price, Justin Verlander, Anibel Sanchez, Alfredo Simon and Shane Greene. Is this a winning rotation for 2015?

Kansas City: They have replaced departing free agent ace James Shields with newly signed Edinson Volquez, keeping newly acquired Brian Flynn and 2014 draft darling Brandon Finnegan in the bullpen for now. KC is going to take a step back and will struggle to compete in the new super-powered AL Central in 2015, but have a slew of 1st round arms that look like they’ll hit in late 2015/early 2016. I do like their under-the-radar signing of Kris Medlen though; he could be a very solid addition to their rotation if he comes back from his 2nd TJ.

Oaklandwill have a new look in 2015, having traded away a number of core players. But their rotation should be OK despite having traded away Samardzija and let Jon Lester and Jason Hammel walk. Why? Because they stand to get back two very good rotation members who missed all of 2014 with TJ surgery in A.J. Griffin and Jarrod Parker. They should re-join the 2014 rotation members Sonny Grey, Scott Kazmir, newly acquired Jesse Hahn and either Jesse Chavez/Drew Pomeranz to form another underrated rotation. Of course, if these guys have injury setbacks, it could be a long season in Oakland.

Texasmade a couple of acquisitions, re-signing their own Colby Lewis and trading for Nats cast-off Ross Detwiler (who should fit in immediately as their 4th starter), to go with ace Yu Darvish and recently recovered Derek Holland. But Texas could significantly improve come mid-season when injured starter Martin Perez should return. The big question mark for Texas is Matt Harrison, who had to have two vertebrae in his back fused and may not return, ever. But if Harrison can come back, that gives Texas an opening day 1-5 that’s pretty improved over last year.

Clevelanddidn’t exactly have the world’s best rotation in 2014 but has done little to improve it going forward. They will continue to depend on Corey Kluber, newly minted Cy Young winner to head the line, but then its question marks. Carlos Carrasco was great in a combo role in 2014; where’d that come from? He was awful in years prior. Is Trevor Bauer dependable? They better hope so; that’s your #3 starter. They just signed Gavin Floyd after his injury shortened 9-game stint with Atlanta last year; he’s no better than a 4th/5th innings eater. Is Gavin Salazar ready for prime time? He wasn’t in 2014. And there’s little else on the farm; the Indians don’t have a significant starting pitcher prospect in their entire system.

Atlanta: The Braves surprisingly parted ways with Kris Medlen and not-so-surprisingly parted ways with Brandon Beachy, Gavin Floyd, Ervin Santana and Aaron Harang. That’s a lot of starter depth to cut loose. They look to go into 2015 with ace Julio Teheran followed by the newly acquired Shelby Miller, the inconsistent Mike Minor, the excellent but scary Alex Wood and under-rated 5th starter David Hale. That’s not a *bad* rotation … but it isn’t very deep. They have cut ties with guys who made nearly half their 2014 starts AND the guy who went 10-1 for them in 2012. They (inexplicably) picked up a starter in Rule-5 draft who had TJ surgery in June; are they really going to carry him that long on the active roster? They have no upper-end SP talent close to the majors. If one of these 5 starters gets hurt, Atlanta could be in trouble.

Philadelphia: all you need to know about the state of the Philadelphia franchise can be summed up right here: A.J. Burnett declined a $12.75M player option to play for the Phillies in 2015 and, instead, signed for 1 year, $8.5M to play for Pittsburgh. They will head into 2015 with their aging 1-2 punch of Cole Hamels and Cliff Lee, the former being constantly dangled in trade rumors but going nowhere because the Phillies GM clearly over-values what a guy like Hamels and his guaranteed contract can actually bring back in return in this market. Past Hamels/Lee there’s a bunch of non-descript names (David Buchanan, the waiver-claim Jerome Williams and the untested Cuban FA Miguel Gonzalez). Can this team even broach 70 wins?

Cincinnatiis moving backwards: they’ve traded away Mat Latos for pennies on the dollar (Keith Law says there’s “make-up issues.”) and moved the effective Alfredo Simon for other bit players. They’re putting a ton of faith that one-pitch Tony Cingrani will last a whole season and the youngster Anthony DeSclafini (obtained for Latos) will comprise a workable rotation. They do have a couple of decent prospects at AAA (Robert Stephenson and Michael Lorenzen) but they seem to be accepting that they’re taking a step back.

St Louistraded away their least effective starter (Shelby Miller) and acquired the best defensive RF in the game (Jason Heyward). Not a bad bit of work. But they now will go into 2015 with a question mark in the rotation; prospect Carlos Martinez will get the first shot and could be good; oft-injured Jaime Garcia is still hanging around, and there’s a couple of good arms in AAA who could matriculate into the rotation via the bullpen as Martinez did in 2014. It could end up being addition by subtraction (Martinez for Miller) but we’ll see.

Arizona has boldly re-made their rotation this off-season, dealing away 2014 opening day starter Wade Miley for a couple of SP prospects and dealing for 6 arms in total thus far. New rotation may not be flashy at the top (the enigmatic Josh Collmenter is slated for the opening day start in 2015) and is followed by former Tampa pitcher Jeremy Hellickson (traded for prospects), the two pitchers acquired from Boston for Miley in Rubby de la Rosa and Allen Webster and then a cattle-call for the 5th starter competition this spring. Arizona also ended up with former Nats farm-hand Robbie Ray, still have the highly regarded Archie Bradley waiting for his free agent clock to get pushed out a year, plus 2013’s darling Patrick Corbin coming off of TJ, not to mention Bronson Arroyo coming back from TJ later in the season. So there’s a lot of arms out there to choose from, eventually. But getting to Bradley-Corbin-Hellickson-de la Rosa-Webster from where they’ll start will be rough.

San Francisco‘s 2015 rotation could be just as effective as it needs to be (after all, they won the 2014 world series having lost Matt Cain mid-season and given the ineffective Tim Lincecum 26 starts). They seem to set to go with Cain, WS hero Madison Bumgarner, the age-less Tim Hudson, and then with Lincecum and re-signed aging FA Jake Peavy. This pushes Yusmeiro Petit to the bullpen for the time being and seemingly closes the door on Ryan Vogelsong‘s SF time. Rumor had it that they were all over Jon Lester… and missed. So a big acquisition to permanently sent Lincecum to the pen could still be in the works. SF’s bigger issue is the loss of offense. But the NL West is so weak they could still sneak into the playoffs again. I list them as question marks though because Cain might not be healthy, Lincecum could still suck, and Hudson and Peavy combined are nearly 80 years of age.

San Diegohas completely re-made their offense; do they have the pitching they need to compete? They signed Brandon Morrow to replace 32 awful starts they gave to Eric Stults last year; that should be an improvement. But they’ve traded away their 2nd best guy (Jesse Hahn) and are now set to have two lesser starters (Odrisamer Despaigne and Robbie Erlin) compete for the rotation. The Padres re-signed lottery ticket Josh Johnson (coming off what seems like his millionth season-ending arm injury) and still have TJ survivor Cory Luebke in the wings, possibly ready for April 1st. Their 1-2-3 of Andrew Cashner, Tyson Ross and Ian Kennedy isn’t that inspiring, but in San Diego’s home park, you don’t have to be Sandy Koufax to succeed. Have they done enough to compete in the NL West?

Which team has taken the biggest step back? Clearly for me its Arizona.

Who is left?

Well, clearly the two big FA names are Max Scherzer and James Shields. Scherzer gambled heavily on himself when he turned down 6/$144M. Would the Tigers make him a new offer? Are the Nationals possibly involved (I hope not for the sake of the team’s chemistry; what would it say to players if the Nats jettisoned Jordan Zimmermann so they could give Scherzer $150M?). He’d make a great fit in San Francisco … who wanted Lester but would get nearly the same great performance out of Scherzer. Meanwhile Shields could fit in Boston or for the Dodgers to give them the depth they’ve lost.

Past the two big names, you have older guys likely to go on one year deals. There’s no longer really room for Ryan Vogelsong in SF; he could be a decent option for someone. Aaron Harang has earned himself a likely 2 year deal as someone’s back of the rotation guy. Guys like Kyle Kendrick or Joe Saunders could be someone’s starter insurance policy. And of course there’s a slew of injury guys who are like pitching lottery tickets. Beachy, Billingsley, and Alexi Ogando all sound intriguing as reclamation cases.

But, once you get past Scherzer and Shields, anyone looking for a big upgrade will have to hit the trade market. The problem there seems to be this: there’s just not that many teams that are already waving the white flag for 2015. From reading the tea leaves this off-season, Atlanta is giving up, Cincinnati may be close, Philadelphia has begrudgingly admitted they’re not going to win, Arizona has already traded away its assets, Colorado is stuck in neutral, Oakland may look like they’re rebuilding but they still will be competitive in 2015, and young teams like Houston and Tampa aren’t giving up what they currently have. So a GM might have to get creative to improve their team at this point.

Detwiler gets another frustrating year with the Nats save a trade. Photo Haraz Ghanbari/AP via federalbaseball.com

So, the tender deadline came and went. I didn’t post any pre-tender deadline analysis because I didn’t think there was any analysis to do. In November I thought *maybe* the team would think about parting ways with Kevin Frandsen or maybe Ross Detwiler … but then went and re-signed Frandsen. I left Detwiler out of my initial salary analysis but …. thinking about it, if you’re nearing $150M of total payroll, why do you want to cut loose one of your bullpen guys over a measly $3-$4M?

So I assumed we wouldn’t non-tender anyone. And we didn’t. I say “we” like i’m part of the team or something.

First; why would a team *trade for* a guy and then non-tender him?? Toronto did this with no less than three recently acquired players, headlined by former uber-prospect Justin Smoak. Per Dave Cameron‘s chat yesterday, Toronto not only acquired Smoak recently but then had to pay a $200k buyout to non-tender him. Just kind of an inexplicable set of transactions; they basically just lit $200k on fire for the privilege of having Smoak on their active roster for 5 weeks. Did Smoak arrive in Toronto and immediately insult the GM’s mother or something?

Boston acquired Juan Francisco off waivers last month and non-tendered him this month; weird. Some other interesting positional players are Gordon Beckham and EverthCabrera; maybe the Nats have some more 2B options on the market now.

But some of the newly-minted FA arms are very intriguing to me:

Kris Medlen; all I can say here is, wow. We’re talking about a guy who had a 256 ERA+ in 2012. Yes I know he’s just had his 2nd TJ surgery, and yes I know he came back down to earth in 2013. But man, he’s only 29, and he’s shown he can be a Greg Maddox-esque hurler in this league. He made $5.8M last year so his guaranteed compensation would still be roughly $5M (you can’t cut a guy’s pay more than 20% in arbitration) … don’t you keep him even if he’s not a sure thing to start the season on your roster?

Brandon Beachy; kind of the same logic as Medlen, but with more caution. Also finishing his 2nd TJ rehab but he’d be significantly cheaper (just $1.45M for 2014 in arbitrated salary). Again; if you’re Atlanta, are you cutting bait just to save $1.5M??

Alexi Ogando: i’ve always liked this guy, had him in fantasy for years. He’s injury prone, yes, but how much of that is because Texas kept changing its mind on how to use him? Is he a middle reliever (2010)? Is he a starter (2011)? Is he a closer (2012)? Is he an 8th inning guy (2013)? Or is he washed up (2014)? I’d sign him to a middle-reliever contract; he only made $2.6M last year.

Wade LeBlanc and Scott Snodgress; seem like low-risk gambles that someone might make on 4-A starters who could be decent. I’ll bet a low-payroll pitchers park team like San Diego could turn these guys into 100 ERA+ pitchers.

Work the phones Mike Rizzo; maybe you can get these guys on minor/major contracts while they rehab.

Jose Fernandez was (arguably) the biggest name to go down to TJ surgery in 2014. Photo via thestar.com

When we hit 20 MLB pitchers going under the knife for blown Ulnar Collateral Ligaments (UCL) on the 2014 season, I posted on possible reasons for the epidemic. By the time the season was over, more than 90 players in professional baseball (and a handful of marquee amateurs, including two first round picks and our own) had gone under the knife for blown UCLs/Tommy John surgery. 2014 was the year of the elbow ligament, no question, in terms of volume and awareness.

This post lists all the major league pitchers who had the surgery this year, with links to the announcements as they happened, along with stills of the pitchers’ mechanics to do a quickie thumb nail analysis of mechanics and whether there’s a relationship to the injury. At the bottom i’ve captured any significant news related to the surgery, MLB being proactive in preventing the injuries, and other TJ news.

First, here’s the complete Tommy John fall-out for the year for major league arms. According to the great injury tracking links below, no less than 91 players in all levels of pro baseball had the surgery in calendar year 2014, of which 29 were MLB-experienced pitchers.

Masahiro Tanaka, diagnosed with torn UCL 7/10/14; a huge blow, nearly as big of an announcement as Jose Fernandez’ if he has to get TJ surgery. No announcement yet though that he’s having the surgery. But, as of 8/5/14 he’s re-habbing and experiencing no pain while throwing, and eventually was able to avoid the surgery. For now.

10 of these 29 pitchers are getting the surgery for the 2nd time. Wow.

Here’s links to other notable non-MLB pitchers who have gotten the surgery as well in 2014:

Jamison Taillon: the Pirates #1 pitching prospect and one of the best pitching prospects in the game. Diagnosed 4/6/14, surgery 4/9/14.

Danny Rosenbaum: Nats AAA starter and long-time farmhand. Surgery 5/8/14. Tough for Rosenbaum because he’s a MLFA this coming off-season, now facing a very uncertain future.

Miguel Sano: one of the best prospects in the minors, had the surgery 3/12/14. He’s not a pitcher, and he initially injured his arm playing in the Dominican Winter League, but it still costs Minnesota one of its best prospects.

Jeff Hoffman, ECU’s right handed starter and consensus top 5 pick in the 2014 draft, hurt his arm and was diagnosed on 5/8/14. He dropped 5 places from his likely drafting spot by the Cubs at #4, which cost him about $X in slot dollars. We talked about whether the Nats (picking at #18) were a likely suitor for him at the time of the injury in early May.

Erick Fedde, UNLV’s friday starter and projected mid-1st round pick, was diagnosed two days after Hoffman on 5/10/14. He dropped perhaps 8 places from his estimated drafting spot of mid 1st round and was picked by Washington. His injury didn’t really cost him much in slot money thanks to the Nats paying over-slot.

Our own Matthew Purke, diagnosed and set for TJ surgery 5/29/14 after really struggling out of the gate this year for Harrisburg. Purke may face an options crunch by the time he’s done re-habbing, thanks to his MLB deal signed on draft-day. (Update: the Nats never let him get there, releasing him on 11/14/14).

Chad Billingsleyhaving flexor tendon surgery while trying to recover from his 2013 TJ surgery. This isn’t counted as a TJ, but is noteworthy.

Not a pitcher, but key Orioles player Matt Wieters had to have TJ surgery on 6/18/14.

Conclusions? None. They’re all over the road. TJ injuries this year happened to those thought to have “dangerous” mechanics and clean mechanics. TJ injuries happened to the league’s harder throwers (Rondon, Ventors, Fernandez) and its softest throwers (Medlen and Arroyo, both of whom are usually at the absolute bottom of the league in terms of fastball velocity). Starters and relievers, no discernable pattern.

I think all you can conclude is this: if you throw a lot of innings, you’re more prone to injury. I know, ground breaking analysis.

Other notable/interesting links I’ve collected on the topic over the length of the season:

Yahoo’s Tim Brown interviewed Zack Greinke (published 5/15/14)who says he made a conscious decision to throw fewer sliders, noting that he could really feel it in his elbow after starts where he threw too many. This tends to support the notion that sliders make a difference.

Jerry Crasnick interviewed commissioner Bud Seligon 5/15/14 and Selig said he’s “concerned.” Great! On a scale of “Resolve Oakland/San Jose territorial rights” concerned to “Resolve MASN dispute” concerned, I wonder where he falls? Maybe he’ll form a blue-ribbon committee that can meet for several years without arriving at any solutions.

Stephania Bell‘s articles on the spate of TJ injuries: from April and again in May.

The American Sports Medicine Institute (led by Dr. James Andrews) released a statement on 5/28/14 on the issue of Tommy John surgeries (as pointed out by David Schoenfield and/or Craig Calcaterra in late may and/or Jerry Crasnick on the same day). Their basic point: don’t throw with max effort.

Dr. James Andrews announced that he’s releasing an app to help keep pitchers healthy. Per screen shots, it will be relatively simple and will have pitch counts, age and rest days calculate a max number of pitchers that a player can throw today.

An interesting analysis of Kansas City’s Yordano Ventura after he was diagnosed with a non-UCL related elbow injury in May.

Thoughtful piece from Dirk Hayhurst about the quest for velocity and the value of soft-throwers like Mark Buehrle.

CBS’s Jon Heyman breaks the news that #1 overall pick Brady Aikenmay have an “elbow ligament issue,” thus holding up the signing. Wow. As we all know, this turned into a big-time stalemate, the non-signing of Aiken (which cascaded down and cost the Astros their 5th round pick too), possible grievances, possible lawsuits, all sorts of NCAA eligibility concerns, and a whole big black-mark for the Astros organization. All over $1.5M. Remember; this is the same team that gave $30M last off-season to 5th starter Scott Feldman.

Will the Nats be staring down Kershaw in the playoffs? Photo via wiki.

Here we are. After a crazy trade deadline in July, and an August and September that featured the division leaders (in most cases) solidifying their positions and extending their leads, the playoffs are upon us.

Lets take a look at the rotations of the playoff teams (despite the fact that the four Wild Card teams are just one-man pitching staffs until they win the play-in game). Who lines up best? For each team i’ve tried to line the pitchers up one through five, with the 5th guy being the one headed to the bullpen.

Just look at what the Dodgers have tried to do to keep their rotation afloat in terms of player acquisition over the past couple of years. I’d like to have their budget. They will have no less than eleven capable, MLB-experienced starters once they’re all healthy. Yes Kershaw is unbeatable, but as pointed out earlier this year, they are basically a .500 team otherwise. Their 4th and 5th starters have been below replacement for much of the past month but they’re getting back Ryu right in time for the playoffs. St. Louis’ rotation looks just as strong as it has been for the past few years; Wainwright quietly has 20 wins and a 2.38 ERA on the season. Lynn has been great. Only Miller has struggled but still has a league-average ERA+.

It is hard not to look at the Nationals’ rotation and claim they’re the deepest one-through-four, despite Gonzalez’s struggles. I’d take our #4 (Fister) over anyone else’s #4, I think our #3 matches up just as favorably to anyone els’es #3, and Strasburg has a 1.34 ERA in September as the #1.

NL Wild Card:

Pittsburgh: Liriano, Cole, Locke, Volquez, Worley (Morton dinged up late Sept, made way for Cole).

San Francisco: Bumgarner, Hudson, Petit, Vogelsong, Peavy(Lincecum to bullpen for Petit, Cain out all year)

The NL WC pitching match-up will be Bumgarner-Liriano. Both teams manipulated their rotations at season’s end to preserve their aces for the coin-flip game. We’ll do a separate prediction piece.

The Braves fell so far, so badly in September that they were nearly surpassed by the lowly NY Mets for 2nd place in the NL East. That’s crazy. But they still remain here as an also-ran because they were in the wild card race until mid-September. I still think it is crazy what they were able to accomplish given the starting pitcher injuries they suffered in spring training and don’t quite understand why Frank Wren was fired. If you want to fire him for his crummy FA contracts so be it; but the man engineered a team that made the playoffs three of the past five years. Harsh treatment if you ask me. Insider comments seem to think that Wren lost an internal power-struggle involving Fredi Gonzalez.

It is hard to look at these rotations and comprehend where these teams currently stand:

How is Baltimore leading the AL East by 12 games? None of these guys are a league-wide “Ace.”

How is Detroit not pulling away from the AL Central with this collection of arms? Of course, you could ask this question of Detroit over and again the past few years; with a stacked lineup and stacked rotation they have just barely won their (usually) weak division year after year.

How does Los Angeles have the best record in the majors with a non-drafted FA and a waiver claim in their Sept rotation? Would you favor this rotation over Detroit’s?

I guess it doesn’t matter; these teams have bashed their way to their titles and should continue to hit in the post-season. Apparently the O’s aren’t going to go with Gausman in their playoff rotation despite his good seasonal numbers. It may be a case of veteran manager going with the veterans, as Gausman’s numbers are pretty much in line with most of the rest of the Baltimore rotation. The injury to Richards really hurts the Angels: Weaver may be close to an Ace but Wilson showed he is hittable in the post-season and lord knows what will happen when LA has to throw their #3 and #4 choices.

AL Wild Cards:

Kansas City: Shields, Duffy, Ventura, Guthrie, Vargas

Oakland: Grey, Samardzija, Lester, Hammel, Kazmir

AL Wild Card looks like a knock-out match-up of Shields and Lester; the A’s burned Grey yesterday to get the win that put them in the playoffs. Oakland has to be kicking themselves; how did they go from (easily) the best team in the majors for the first half to struggling to hang onto the WC spot? On paper replacing 3/5ths of the rotation (out with Chavez, Milone, Pomeranz and Straily, in with Samardzija, Lester and Hammel) sounded like a great idea … but to me the team’s chemistry was clearly un-balanced. At least they held on to the spot and avoiding a one-game play-in against Felix Hernandez.

AL Also-Rans:

Seattle: Hernandez, Walker, Iwakuma, Paxton, Young (Elias out for year)

New York: McCarthy, Greene, Kuroda, Capuano, Pineda (with Tanakafinally coming back at season’s end. Nova and Sabathia gone all year with injuries).

All Seattle needed to do was *get* to the wild card game … and they’d have great odds of advancing behind ace Hernandez. But struggled to the finish line. Meanwhile Cleveland and New York would have been mentioned here a week ago, but both squads just ran out of time to make comebacks. I’ll give NY credit: they played 7 games better than their pythagorean record with huge chunks of their rotation gone for the season and depending on guys who’s names I had to look up.

This year’s MLB trade deadline was crazy. Never before have so many big-time names moved teams. And certainly I cannot remember so many big-time pitchers relocating mid-season as well.

Lets look at the playoff contender rotations as they stand right now, with Trade deadline acquisitions highlighted in blue.

NL

Washington: Strasburg, Gonzalez, Zimmerman, Fister, Roark

Atlanta: Teheran, Minor, Santana, Harang, Wood

Milwaukee: Lohse, Garza, Gallardo, Peralta, Nelson

Cincinnati: Cueto, Latos, Bailey, Leake, Simon

St. Louis: Wainwright, Masterson, Lackey, Lynn, Miller

Pittsburgh: Liriano, Morton, Locke, Volquez, Worley

Los Angeles: Kershaw, Greinke, Ryu, Beckett, Haren

San Francisco: Bumgarner, Hudson, Lincecum, Vogelsong, Peavy

St. Louis clearly did the most in the NL, acquiring two mid-rotation guys to help cover for the injured Michael Wacha and Jaime Garcia, but it is hard to look at their rotation and say they’d have the advantage over some of their potential playoff rivals. San Francisco lost its ace (thought he hasn’t pitched like an Ace since signing his new deal) Matt Cain, and his replacement was not inspiring confidence (Yusmiero Petit), so they added former Cy Young winner Peavy (who is pitching better than his 1-11 W/L record .. but not a lot better). Otherwise the NL playoff contenders mostly stood pat. There was some small surprise that the free-spending Dodgers wouldn’t try to improve upon the suddenly underperforming Josh Beckett and/or the “fool-me-once” Dan Haren. They’ll struggle to get through the #3 and #4 starts of their planned playoff rotation to get back to their co-aces Kershaw and Greinke (who was good but not shut-down in last year’s playoffs). The home-town Nats may find themselves with an uncomfortable decision to make if they make the playoffs; which starter to send to the pen? Roark is the least renound and the least tenured … but he has clearly been more effective than other rotation members.

It continues to amaze that the Braves are competing, given the losses they’ve faced in their rotation. They are missing (arguably) their planned #2, #3 and #5 starters in Kris Medlen, Brandon Beachy and Gavin Floyd but are getting by thanks to two mid-spring acquisitions (Santana and Harang) and the surprise performances of youngsters Wood and David Hale (who didn’t merit his demotion to the bullpen).

AL

Baltimore: Tillman, Norris, Chen, Gonzalez, Gausman

Toronto: Buehrle, Dickey, Happ, Strohman, Hutchinson

New York: Kuroda, Phelps, Capuano, Greene, McCarthy

Detroit: Scherzer, Verlander, Sanchez, Price, Porcello

Kansas City: Shields, Duffy, Ventura, Guthrie, Vargas

Oakland: Grey, Samardzija, Lester, Hammel, Kazmir

Los Angeles: Weaver, Wilson, Richards, Shoemaker, Santiago

Seattle: Hernandez, Iwakuma, Paxton, Elias, Young

I didn’t include fringe playoff contenders such as Cleveland or Tampa Bay here; both of those rotations were purged and weakened, and their odds of catching one of these listed WC contendors is long. Oakland completely re-made their rotation here, attempting to keep up with Detroit, who now features the last three AL Cy Young winners to go along with Sanchez (who finished 4th last year in a season where he led the league in both ERA and FIP). That’s quite a lineup. Meanwhile Seattle likely finishes 10 games back of the Angels and could end up facing them in the coin-flip wild-card game … and could end up throwing the best pitcher in the AL at them (which has been noted as a significant down-side to the 2nd wild-card matchup; who wants to see a team lose out to a divisional rival that they bested by so many games in a play-in game?).

New York is the “Atlanta” of the AL this year; they currently have four planned rotation members on the D/L and (likely) out for the year (CC Sabathia, Ivan Nova, Michael Pineda and Masahiro Tanaka). Their 4th and 5th starters were a 14th and 15th round pick respectively. They’ve been outscored by nearly 30 runs on the year yet somehow have a winning record. It seems like just a matter of time before their luck runs out and they settle back below .500.

Who would you rather go to war with, Detroit or Oakland’s rotation? Probably Detroit’s rotation, given its depth one to four. But the ALCS could be one heck of a series.

Jose Fernandez is (arguably) the biggest name to go down to TJ surgery yet. Photo via thestar.com

Its the biggest story in baseball so far in 2014. We’ve had nearly 20 MLB pitchers get diagnosed with torn elbow ligaments so far this calendar year. All of them have or are set to undergo “Tommy John” surgery (also known as ulnar collateral ligament/UCL replacement surgery). That’s nearly as many as who got the surgery ALL of 2013 and we’re just 6 weeks into the season. There’s an alarming trend upwards over just the past few seasons of pitchers getting this surgery. There’s been plenty more minor leaguers (two Nats farmhands in Erik Davis and Danny Rosenbaum have already gotten it in 2014) and already a couple of very high-profile draft prospects as well (including as discussed in this space potential 1st rounders Jeff Hoffman and Erick Fedde just in the last week).

Lots of people are talking about this story, especially some heavy-weights in the baseball world. A sampling:

Tom Verducci (he of the “Verducci effect”) proposed a solution in a column this week after the Jose Fernandez announcement. His idea? Lowering the mound across all levels of the sport. He draws this conclusion after hosting a very interesting round-table on MLB Network.

Jayson Stark teamed up with ESPN injury analyst Stephania Bell and former player Alex Cora to discuss the rise in arm injuries in this ESPN.com video, and they follow Andrews’ theory of year-round pitching.

Chris O’Leary, king of the Inverted-W (whether you believe his theories or not, I’ve included this link here) has his own theories as discussed here. He doesn’t really have much in the way of explanation, just more whining about how every pitcher’s mechanics has something you can complain about.

So what the heck is going on?? Lets talk about some theories. I’ll highlight them in Blue.

The new “hot theory” is essentially this: Over-throwing at Showcase events, which have become crucial scouting events for kids raised in the United States, are to blame. Thanks to the rise in travel leagues and select teams, scouts spend less time sitting at high school games and more time at these all-star events. To prescribers of this theory, it isn’t so much about the amount of innings or pitches that kids throw … its the nature of the “showcase” events and the high pressure situations that those events put kids under. Kids are throwing year-round, and they’re ramping up max-effort pitches at national competitions multiple times per year, and in some cases out of “season.” This leads to serious damage to kids’ arms done as 16 and 17 yr olds, which then manifests itself over the years and results in blown ligaments in pro ball.

Do you buy this explanation? It certainly makes sense to me, but how do you prove this? And, it doesn’t explain the similar rise in elbow injuries to non-American pitchers.

Is it less about the showcase events and more about the Larger Increase in Youth pitched innings thanks to the rise in Travel Leagues? This theory also makes some sense to me: thirty years ago kids played an 18-20 game spring Little League season, at best would pitch half those games and that was it. Maybe they played in the fall too, but there were specific innings limits in place that protected kids. Now instead of playing limited spring and fall seasons, kids are playing AAU travel teams that play 40-50 games a summer, plus weekend tournaments, plus (eventually) the above showcase events as they get closer to matriculation. This theory certainly is supported by a startling rise in youth arm injuries, as noted in this 2010 study by the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.

But, if its “bad” to play more baseball … then shouldn’t we be seeing even MORE injuries from players who grew up in third-world baseball hot beds like the Dominican Republic or Venezuela, where by all accounts kids play baseball from sun-up to sun-down 12 months out of the year in tropical climates?

Interestingly, of the list of 19 MLB players so far who have been diagnosed with a torn UCL (see next section), there’s 4 non-American developed pitchers (Rondo, Nova, Figueora, Cisnero). 4 of 19 = 21%, whereas about 22% of MLB pitchers are non-American developed (my 22% figure comes from this quick study that I did; I grabbed every active MLB pitcher as of early May 2014 and did a quick-and-dirty player upbringing analysis to determine that about 78% of players “grew up” in the current American system of player development). It is small sample size … but the percentage of american versus foreign developed players are so far exactly in line with the total percentage of each type of player in the larger pool of MLB pitchers. This doesn’t seem to support either of the two above theories.

We’ve all heard horror stories about pitch counts and pitcher abuse at high school events in Japan (this came to light over the winter as we looked at Masahiro Tanaka and learned about these Japanese showcase events; this article here at thebiglead.com talks about one Japanese prospect’s 772 pitches thrown over 9 days, and Jeff Passan talked about Tanaka’s own pitch count abuse stories and his average pitch counts as a Japanese-league pro). Unfortunately there’s not a ton of data available about this TJ theory and Japanese pitchers. I can find a couple of instances of Asian pitchers getting the surgery (Kyuji Fujikawa in 2012 being the most recent example), but not enough to establish any trends.

But lets state it this way: you can’t have things both ways. Both these stereotypes about player upbringing cannot be true:

Latin American poor youth plays baseball from sun up to sun down 12 months a year, building arm strength constantly, therefore his arm is “stronger” and he’s less suceptible to injury

American little leaguer plays limited schedules (18 games in the spring, perhaps fewer in the fall), has closely monitored pitch counts, therefore does not abuse his arm as a youth and thus his arm is “stronger” later in life as a result.

Of these 19 pitchers, they are evenly split between being starters (10) and relievers (9). So that doesn’t seem to lend itself to any Starter vs Reliever usage conclusion.

How about Pitching Mechanics? We’ve all heard ad-naseum about the “Inverted W” and people talking about pronation and timing and elbow lift and etc etc. Here’s a quick attempt to analyize the mechanics of each of these 19 guys (all photos grabbed as thumbnails from google images for the purposes of demonstration; no copyright infringement intended).

Quick and Dirty Mechanics analysis (images in same order as list of pitchers above, which is choronological in order of diagnosis in 2014):

But I’ll immediately add a caveat to these classifications; at various stop-points in a guy’s delivery, he may exhibit “good” or “bad” trends. Maybe some of these “sideways-M” guys are actually “inverted-W” guys. Maybe some of these inverted-W guys are ok and the stills make their mechanics seem worse than they are.

Nonetheless; there’s no trend among the 19 guys in terms of their mechanics. In some cases they’re “bad” (Griffin and Gearrin’s look awful) but in some cases excellent (nobody should look at Moore’s mechanics and say they’re anything but clean, nor with Parnell or Corbin). These pitchers are overhanders, 3/4-slot guys and even side-armers/submarine guys (Gearrin and Moylan). These guys include hard throwers (Rondon had the 3rd highest velocity of *any* pitcher in 2013) and softer-throwing guys (Medlen had one of the lowest fastball velocities in the majors in 2013). There’s starters and relievers almost equally represented in this list.

Conclusion; there’s no conclusions to draw from pitching mechanics analysis. I think all attempts to look at guys’ mechanics and make judgements are useless. I think (as does Keith Law and other pundits in the field) that the “Inverted W” is nonesense and that “research” posted online by concerned-fathers-turned-self-appointed-mechanics-experts is not exactly trustworthy. The fact of the matter is this: throwing a baseball over and over is hard on the body. Throwing a ball is an unnatural motion, and throwing a ball at max-effort will eventually lead to pitching injuries, no matter what your mechanics. They can be “good” or “bad” according to someone’s pet theory on bio-mechanics and it has nothing to do about whether a pitcher is going to throw 10 seasons without injury or have two tommy johns before they’re 25.

Some historical context for pitching mechanics arguments: the pitcher who has the 2nd most innings thrown in the non-knuckleballer modern era (behind Nolan Ryan) was Don Sutton. Sutton displayed absolutely *classic* inverted-W mechanics, never hit the D/L in his career and threw nearly 5,300 innings over the course of 23 seasons. Walter Johnson‘s mechanics were awful; he slung the ball sideways as he literally pushed backwards away from the hitter at the end of his delivery. If someone saw Johnson’s mechanics today they’d talk about how over-compensated he was on his shoulder and how he lost velocity thanks to landing stiff and having zero follow through. Johnson only threw 5,900 innings in his pro career; yeah those mechanics really held him back. Nolan Ryan was a freak of nature, throwing at that velocity for as long as he did. The point? You just don’t know.

Maybe there’s something to the “showcase abuse” theory for some players. Maybe there’s something to the travel-ball overuse theory for some kids. But I think the answer may be a bit more simple. We all know there’s been a rise in the average MPH of fastballs in the majors, both on starters and especially with relievers. My theory is simply this: kids who “can” throw upper 90s spend all their time trying to throw upper 90s/max effort fastballs 100% of the time, and human arms just cannot withstand that kind of abuse over and over. In prior generations, kids who “could” throw that hard wouldn’t, or would rarely try to throw that hard, and thus suffered fewer elbow injuries.

Side note: I also firmly believe that we’re “victims of our own success” to a certain extent with respect to modern medicine; 30 years ago would someone have just “blown out their arm” instead of being diagnosed specifically with a “torn ulnar collateral ligament?” Would some kid in the low minors who hurt his harm even bother to get an MRI? How much of the rise in these injuries is simply the fact that we’re better at diagnosing injuries in the modern sports world?

Why are these kids trying to throw so hard these days? Because velocity is king, and that’s what scouts look for. A kid who “only” throws mid 80s as a 17-yr old is dismissed, while the kid who can throw mid 90s at the same age is fawned over. Guys like Greg Maddox, Mark Buehrle, and Tom Glavine probably don’t even get drafted in the modern baseball climate thanks to the over-focus on pure velocity.

You can talk about upbringing and showcase events and pitch counts and mechanics all you want, but I think it comes down to Pitcher over-exertion thanks to the rising trend of fastball velocityand the human nature urge of prospects and farm-hands to show more and more velocity so they can advance their careers.

What do you guys think? Do you dismiss the “inverted-W” arguments like I do? Do you think its all about showcase events?

Should this man be on this team? Photo Nats official 2014 via rantsports.com

Despite there being just a scant week until games start … i’m at a loss for content here! Fear not; Mr. Tom Boswell always chats on mondays. Here’s the 3/24/14 edition. This was a monster chat; he took questions for 3.5 hours.

Q: Steven Souza just had a monster spring: Does he need a year at Syracuse or can the Nats use him now?

A: Some guys here love Steven Souza. But he’s an outfielder in a system that already has 5 multi-million dollar outfielders under contract, so he’s not going to break camp with the team. He’s yet to play above AA and could use some seasoning against the near-MLB quality AAA starters. But the Nats didn’t put him on the 40-man roster for the heck of it; you have to think he’s going to feature this year to cover for injuries. He needs some positional flexibility. He’s listed as a third baseman as well; another position we don’t really need any cover for right now. Souza’s problem is that he’s a corner player (LF/RF/3B/1B) on a team with a bunch of them already. So he’s going to have to out-hit a starter to get ABs. Boswell says the same thing I do about not ever playing above AA. Lets see how he does in upstate NY in April.

Q: Is Moore going to lose out on his spot to Peterson?

A: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if a guy already is on the 40-man (Tyler Moore), then the odds of someone who is NOT currently on our (full) 40-man (aka Brock Peterson) beating out an established 40-man player AND dislodging an existing guy off the 40-man roster seems rather remote. Besides, are we even sure Moore is making the 25-man roster at this point? The team already has 5 OFers and needs another guy who can play middle infield, not a guy who can only play a corner. Peterson is a 1B/OF type, much as Moore is. Maybe this is all a precursor towards moving Moore to a team that covets him (Houston). Boswell agrees that Moore is “on the bubble” and then notes that 1B competition after LaRoche is gone will be quite interesting.

[Interlude: someone asked a question about what “Cybermetrics” was. WAR, OPS and WHIP]. Boswell answered it well, getting in his own dig at WAR while he was at it.

Q: Will Lobaton’s throwing arm add to an already-weak area?

A: Maybe; but I’m not sweating the throwing arm mechancis of our once-a-week catcher. I’m more worried about whether Doug Fister is going to be ready for 4/1. Boswell points out that Lobaton’s pitch framing is one of the best … and that if your backup catcher has just one weakness then you’re doing a-ok.

Q: Who’s the 5th starter going to be?

A: Now I’m flip-flopping again, trying to read the tea-leaves, and I’m guessing Taylor Jordan wins it. Ironically it will come down to Tanner Roark‘s flexibility; he’ll head to the pen to be the 7th man and he’ll be happy about it. If Roark were to win the spot, Jordan would be heading to AAA to keep starting and we’d be basically auditioning a kid in the #7 spot (since it seems like Ryan Mattheus is heading to the D/L and Christian Garcia just hasn’t shown he’s got the stuff). I’m ok with this configuration. Boswell uses my previous arguments in saying that Roark deserves it and should have it on merit. We’ll see.

Q: Are you worried about the back of the Nats bullpen with Storen and Soriano’s shaky spring training stats?

A: Yes. Short Sample Sizes, Spring Training stats, blah blah. Soriano has looked awful, Storen not much better. The Bullpen was the weakest part of this team last year and these guys are making too much coin to be just so-so. Problem is, if Soriano blows a bunch of saves and loses the closer job, you might as well just release him because his non-closer splits show what a moper he can be. This is an area to keep an eye on early in the season. Boswell seems to think Soriano will be fine but worries about Storen.

Q: Are the Nationals vindicated in “Shutdown gate” now that Medlen is going in for a second TJ?

A: Phew, I tell you this is a topic I’ve avoided because I want to keep my blood pressure down. But others have certainly chimed in on it (Ted Leavengood at Seamheads.com opined on 3/18/14, as did Thom Loverro in the WashingtonTimes on 3/13/14 and Rantsports.com’s less than cordial website posted its own opinion in the same timeframe). You’ll notice that nowhere in this list are the blowhards at NBCSports’ HardballTalk, some of the more loud and ardent critics of the Nationals 2012 decisions. I wonder why; its like it is in the Newspaper business; nobody notices when you print a retraction of a 20-point headline and bury it on page 12 a few days later; all people remember is the headline.

I think honestly my opinion is in line iwth Loverro’s; we won’t really know if the Strasburg plan or the Medlen plan is really “the best” course of action until both guys are retired. If Strasburg breaks down again, he’ll be in the same place as Medlen. Yes the Nats plan looks better now that we have Strasburg going on opening day and the Braves will be lucky to have Medlen back and healthy this time next year. But it still doens’t prove anything about pitcher mechanics and proclivity to injury (another topic that makes my blood boil; people just spouting off internet theories about biomechanics and presenting themselves as experts on the topic … another topic for another day).

An important note from another questioner on the same topic: all four guys going in for their 2nd TJ surgery this spring (Medlen, Brandon Beachy, Patrick Corbin and Jarrod Parker had their first TJ surgery AFTER both Strasburg and Jordan Zimmermann‘s surgeries. The Nats approach seems to be more and more vindicated by the year.

Boswell doesn’t really bite at the offer to say “I told you so” but offers a link to a paper at NIH on the topic.

Q: Does Espinosa beat out Rendon?

A: No. Yes Espinosa is superior defensively; you don’t need the second coming of Mark Belanger at second. Boswell agrees.

Q: Did Rick Shue really make that big of a difference on this team?

A: Looking at splits both pre- and post- Rick Eckstein/Rick Shue hiring/firing, you would be inclined to say yes. Was this causation or correlation? Who knows. Boswell doesn’t address the second part of a two-part question.

Q: Is the game of baseball headed for disaster thanks to big market dominance, over-emphasis on the teams in the 4 biggest cities and declining popularity?

A: I sense this questioner has a bit of bias. Yes baseball’s ratings are miniscule when compared to Football’s; ask yourself how Football’s ratings would look if there was a game every night. Baseball attendance dwarfs any other sport and is rising. There’s national emphasis on “national” teams sure … but I’ve heard cogent, well put arguments that baseball itself is now basically a regional sport. A strong sport with strong local ties that don’t translate nation-wide. As compared to the NFL, where if the superbowl is Green Bay vs New England people tune in because they associate those teams with their star quarterbacks, not with their geography.

The thing that I worry about is the incredible revenue disparities we’re starting to see. I do believe that the RSN monies that large market teams are pulling in will eventually give way to some sort of small-market owner revolt as the playoffs become the same teams year after year. Sort of like what we see in European Soccer leagues. Nobody wants to see that.

Boswell notes some stats about attendance, calls the game booming and also repeats my “regional points.”

Q: How important at the two early-season series versus Atlanta (April 4-6 at home and then April 11-13 away)?

A: I’d like to be a cynic and say something pithy like, “a game on April 5th counts the same in the standings as a game on September 30th.” But in this case, I think a new manager, a weakened rival and a team that got its *ss handed to them last year by Atlanta will want to make a statement. It could be damaging if the Braves somehow come in here and take 2 of 3. Boswell does talk about the opportunity to put pressure on the Braves early.

Q: Is this the year Strasburg puts it all together?

A: It seems like it; he’s in the same place Zimmermann was in 2013 in terms of surgery recovery; I’d love to see him win 20 games. Boswell drinks the kool-aid and then points out the excellent Adam Kilgorepiece in the WP a few days ago on Strasburg; its worth a read.

Q: Who do you think has the most upside between Brian Goodwin, Eury Perez and Michael Taylor? Are the Nats still high on Destin Hood?

A: A prospect question! I’d go Goodwin, Taylor then Perez at this point. But if Goodwin plateaus again this summer Taylor will surpass him. I think Perez has peaked as a late-innings defensive replacement/pinch runner at this point and may be trade-able/DFA able sooner than later. Hood’s time with the organization is running out; he’s entering his 7th minor league season after hitting just .224 with no power in AA last year. I’m thinking he’ll repeat and then hit free agency. Too bad. Boswell doesn’t sound like he likes any of these guys.

Q: Between the Morse trade (Cole, Krol, Treinen), the Guzman trade (Roark), and the Capps trade (Ramos), plus a few others, it seems like the Nats have made some really good trades. Umm, please tell me that the people who scouted these players before any of us had heard of them are well compensated.

A: Yeah, the Nats pro scouting squad has definitely done some great work as of late. Boswell notes that scouts are not paid a ton … but that the Nats raided other teams for quality guys by giving them more respect and input in this org.

Q: Every year the number of pitchers requiring Tommy John surgery seems to be higher than the year before. It has to be clear at this point that the innings limit (alone) is not the answer. When does baseball finally figure this out?

A: Well, what’s the answer then? You can look at literally every pitcher and find a fault or two with his mechanics; this guy has the “inverted W,” this guy subluxes his shoulder, this guy’s arm isn’t in the right position when he lands, this guy’s arm is too high, this guy’s arm is too low. Nobody can define what “perfect mechanics” are. I started pulling up video/images of the career MLB leaders of innings pitched and, guess what, those guys don’t have perfect mechanics either. Don Sutton? 7th all-time in baseball IP and basically 2nd if you take out knuckleballers and dead-ball guys … and he has a perfect inverted-W in his motion.

What is the answer? I wish I knew; i’d be the most in-demand pitching consultant on the planet. When fully 1/3rd of major league pitchers have had Tommy John surgery, and that numbers seems to be rising, maybe the answer is found by looking at the evolving role of pitchers. Velocity is king now: 30 years ago if someone threw 90 it was special; now its mediocre. Relievers especially; think about how power arms in the bullpen are coveted now. Is it possible that the answer to all these arm issues is simply that guys are just trying to throw too hard these days? That’s not much of an answer though. We can talk about youth development, over-throwing as kids, AAU/travel leagues and 10year olds going from playing 18-20 little league games to 45 travel-league games a year. But I’m not sure that’s entirely it; baseball recruits from the Dominican Republic basically did nothing for years except play sand-lot baseball from sun-up to sun-down and that doesn’t seem to affect their longer term injuries….

Or does it? I wonder if there’s any correlation to the “nature” of a players youth development versus future injury? American system versus Japanese versus a developing latino country like Venezuela/Puerto Rico or the D.R.? Excellent post topic.

Boswell totally punts on the question; maybe since there’s no real answer.

Q: Given what Souza has been doing lately, should we focus less on “age appropriateness” in the minors?

A: No. I think Souza is the exception, not the rule. If you’re in your mid 20s and you’ve yet to succeed beyond high A … that’s pretty indicative of what your ceiling may be. Simple as that. Boswell points out that Roark is 27 and is a classic “late bloomer.”

Q: Does the news that Scherzer and Desmond declined long-term deals portend eventual trouble for the likes of Strasburg and Harper?

A: No; i think those guys were already going to be trouble. What’s the common denominator here? Two words: Scott Boras. Scherzer == Boras client. Strasburg? same. Harper? Same. Desmond isn’t a Boras client but he’s gotta be looking at some of the monster SS deals out there and saying, I’m going to hit the FA market to see what’s out there. Can’t blame him. The 2016 off-season is going to be an interesting one for this team. Boswell mentions the Elvis Andrus contract, as I have many times, as a game-changer for Desmond.

Another week, another Boswell chat (this time 3/10/14). Not much reaction to my big rotation rankings post yesterday; maybe 4800 words is too many Here’s about a 1000 instead about Nats stuff instead of overall baseball stuff.

Q: Interested in your thoughts on the Fister elbow inflammation?

A: I’d say that I’m cautiously concerned about Doug Fister. It wasn’t a grimace-induced injury like what happened to Kris Medlen. You could easily explain this away as a typical spring training injury. I think the best answer is “we just have to wait and see.” If Fister misses his next start … and isn’t throwing between starts, watch out. As we have already learned … he’s already feeling good enough to throw today (Tuesday 3/11/14) so maybe it was just a scare. Boswell accuses the Nats of being “underly worried” about its players’ ST maladies in the past, and then says we’ll have to wait and see. He does also reference Medlen though.

Q: Does Ross Detwiler being the only lefty in the 5th starter competition give him any advantage?

A: Maybe. Maybe a little. I wouldn’t mind having a 2nd lefty starter instead of a 4th righty starter, but the real reason Ross Detwiler will win the 5th starter role will come down more to options and performance versus his handedness. This is well-worn territory though (see previous Boswell chat here and rotation projections here) so we won’t go into it greatly. Boswell has a good point; Detwiler’s being left-handed is a disadvantage b/c the team knows they can stick him in the pen and he’ll instantly be a valuable reliever. And then I believe Boswel predicts that Tanner Roark is winning the 5th starter spot and Detwiler is heading to the pen. Wow.

Q: Is MLB stalling on the MASN issue b/c they’re waiting for Peter Angelos to die?

I didn’t want to phrase this “question” this way, but it was the most succinct. Answer is, “No even the bastards that run MLB aren’t that crass.” At least not overtly. I think the real answer is that Bud Selig realizes just how impossible this situation is (and, frankly, the SF-Oakland-San Jose issue as well) from a legal standpoint and he’s going to just keep on waiting for one side to call out “chicken” and propose something. We talked more at length about this issue a month ago when the Jonah Keri revalation surfaced, and (of course) nothing new has happened since. Boswell does call this an “ultra cynical” view.

Q: Why was Matt Skole cut so quickly?

A: Because he needs at-bats, and he’s not going to get as many of them the further we get into spring training as the veterans want 3ABs/game instead of one. He wasn’t going to make the team; why does anyone care when he was “cut” from the major league squad? I dunno; the whole “cuts issue” in spring training is faintly ridiculous for me anyway; is the guy on the 40-man roster? No? Then he’s not making this team out of Viera. This isn’t the cattle-call that we had for pitchers in 2008 when “cuts” actually meant something closer to when your high school team had cuts. Boswell agrees … and then gushes about Stephen Souza.

Q: Does Strasburg’s new slider put undue stress on the elbow?

A: What google article did this guy find that told him that?? I’ve never bought that argument and here’s why: I never really learned how to throw a curve ball. I didn’t really realize this until I was an adult, but the “curves” I always thought I was throwing as a kid? Yeah; they were sliders. I held the ball with a curve grip and just let it tumble out of my arm, bringing my arm across my body without snapping my wrist. And lemme tell you what: throwing a slider in this fashion was a heck of a lot easier on my arm than it was to violently snap my wrist and throw a curve ball, as I learned later on. Personally I’ve always thought the adage, “sliders hurt your arm” was B.S. Boswell hedges, saying that there’s different ways to throw a slider.

Q: Does it seem to you that Tanner Roark doesn’t get the respect his stats would seem to deserve?

A: Yes, absolutely. I wish I had a nickel every time I heard someone completely discount his 50+ innings of stellar work last September and invent some reason why some minor leaguer with 12 innings of experience (ahem, Christian Garcia) should be in the MLB bullpen instead of Roark. Why does this keep happening? Probably because he was an afte- thought, a lowly right-handed middle reliever without an eye-opening velocity or pitch. All he does is command his fastball, keep it low and earn grounders. Yes Detwiler (his 5th starter competition) was a first rounder … but I think at this point in everyone’s development, the team wants the best 25 guys on the field and aren’t really that concerned about how much bonus money they were paid 8 years ago. I think we should all look up the definition of “sunk cost” and move on. Boswell thinks Roark is a classic late bloomer.

Q: Bryce Harper said that, with a healthy knee, he should be able to stay in on left handed pitching. What type of performance should we expect to see with him against lefties, that will be indicative of a breakout season from him?

A: I hope this is true; he was pretty bad last year against lefties. I couldn’t easily find his lefty splits for just April before his injuries … that’d be an interesting split. I have no idea if this is true; it could be. Something tells me his knee pain was worse than he really let on about, all season. Boswell points out Bryce’s rookie season splits against lefties were better.

Q: What is going to happen with Tyler Moore this year?

A: At this point I have no idea; maybe just PH duties off the bench and occasional mop-up duty? We’ve covered this territory many times before. Does it make sense to keep a third outfielder on the bench over a utility guy? Not to me … if I was constructing this team i’d be sending Moore to AAA or looking for a trade and keeping another guy who can play infield. Boswell thinks a trade to a second division team that can start him is in order.

Q: If “the window” is only open for a short time, how do you justify not finding a way to keep Strasburg going in 2012?

A: (the question was a bit longer but basically calls out Boswell for advising a double standard in terms of approving the Stephen Strasburg shutdown but also urging the Nats to “hurry up” and take advantage of this current “window” of opportunity). Another topic that’s well-oiled; the Strasburg shutdown. Honestly I don’t think the Nats truly feel that they have a finite “window” right now; yes there’s a huge transition year after 2016 … is that the end of a window or merely a way to move onto the next phase? Boswell points out some facts supporting the Nats 2012 shutdown decision … it is nice to hear someone arguing FOR the health of a player.

Last year, with my excitement over Washington’s Dan Haren signing and my supposition that Washington had the best rotation in the game, I ranked all 30 team’s rotations ahead of the 2013 season. Then, after the season was done, I revisited these pre-season rankings with a post-mortem to see how close (or, more appropriately, how far off) my rankings turned out to be.

Here’s the 2014 version of this same post: Pre-season rankings of the MLB’s rotations; 1 through 30. Warning; this is another huge post. I guess I’m just verbose. At this point midway through Spring Training there’s just a couple of possible FAs left that could have altered these rankings (Ervin Santana being the important name unsigned right now), so I thought it was time to publish.

The top teams are easy to guess; once you get into the 20s, it becomes pretty difficult to distinguish between these teams. Nonetheless, here we go (I heavily depended on baseball-reference.com and mlbdepthcharts.com for this post, along with ESPN’s transaction list per team and Baseball Prospectus’ injury reports for individual players).

I’ll bet you don’t know who this is, but I think he’s baseball’s best GM. Photo AP via mail.com

I was listening to a baseball podcast this past week about General Managers in baseball and heard an interesting fact; it has now been more than two years since an MLB General Manager has been fired. Sure enough, the last GM fired was Houston’s Ed Wade in November of 2011. There is a GM with less service time (Rick Hahn of the White Sox), but he rose to take over the job for long time GM Kenny Williams, who was promoted to executive VP of the team. So all in all there’s been decent stability among baseball executives in the shorter term.

I’ve had a draft version of a “GM Rankings” post written for nearly three years. Why so long? Because I started the post, got distracted, and then no less than seven general manager positions were filled/replaced in two very hectic weeks following the end of the 2011 season. There’s no way you can judge how well a GM has done with just a few months on the job, so there was no point in trying to rank the GMs when a quarter of them were un-rankable.

Well, now we’re two plus years onwards from October 2011, each of those seven new GMs has had two seasons and three off-seasons to show their vision, and I think its time to revisit my rankings.

Below is an attempt to rank the GMs, #1 to #30. Beware: this is a massive post. 6,000+ words. I may have over-done it a little bit.

To me, a successful GM balances several factors all at once:

Winning at the major league level (obviously).

Total payroll outlay (in the context of free agency and use of your payroll budget)

Player development/Farm system rankings

Trades and industry opinion and reaction on moves made to build your team

Now for the caveats to keep in mind to the above GM goals:

Purposely NOT winning on the field: In some cases you get carte blanche to purposely be awful on the field after years of mis-management and get a pass (see Houston Astros and the Chicago Cubs, along with several other teams to a lesser, less obvious extent).

Payroll discrepancies/Major market GMs: To me, generating the best or 2nd best record in baseball with the largest payroll isn’t proving anything. In fact, if you do NOT make the playoffs despite such a massive payroll (as the Red Sox didn’t do in 2010 and the Yankees didn’t do in 2012), then if anything you’re really failing as a GM. So payroll versus success counts heavily to me. As you’ll see below with the rankings of the GMs from the profligate teams.

Farm system usage caveats: In some cases you sacrifice your farm system to make acquisitions to help you win now (like what the Milwaukee Brewers did in 2011 and what Toronto has done for the last couple of years).

I created a GM rankings spreadsheet where I track all sorts of interesting information that you use to judge GMs (the link is also along the right hand side of the blog), and where I tried to quantitatively judge the 30 GMs. The spreadsheet has GM tenure, market size, ownership meddling factors, Farm system rankings, 2012 and 2013 payroll versus W/L rankings, plus my attempts to quantify three facets of a GM’s job: MLB success, Trades and FA moves and the Farm system. I will freely admit; i am paying significantly more attention to performance over the past three years than performance over the past 10. Maybe that’s fair, may be not. But it hurts a long-time GM like Brian Cashman who guided his team to the playoffs year after year (but, see Cashman’s write up for my reservations on GMs of massive payroll teams).

I’m classifying the GMs into rough tiers:

The Elite: The best GMs in the game, who have balanced payroll, on-field success and development the best.

The Excellent: a group of ten or so GMs who are all excellent at what they do and are mostly interchangeable up and down the order.

The Middle-ground: a group of GMs that happens to include three of the biggest spender teams and the bottoming-out teams that are difficult to judge.

The Concerning: GMs who for various reasons are struggling right now.

The Underperforming: the bottom few GMs who for various reasons are easy targets for bloggers based on their moves and their teams.

It is really hard to rank these guys 1 to 30 without someone nit picking the order, but I would argue with you if you told me that some one in the bottom tier was actually “good.” It wasn’t as easy to do these rankings as I thought it would be; in fact every time I’ve come back to this post i’ve ended up moving around the GMs, to the point where I’m just declaring victory and publishing. I like the top and bottom of these rankings, but if you wanted to argue that the guy I’ve got ranked 22nd really should be 18th, then I probably won’t disagree.

Lets give it a shot:

The Elite

1. John Mozeliak, St. Louis. What more can you say about the model franchise of baseball and its leader/architect? The #1 farm system last year, a huge percentage of its players home-grown, in the playoffs three of the last four years, a win and a runner-up in that time, and all while maintaining a payroll outside the top 10 in the league. This team survived the FA loss of the game’s best player (Albert Pujols) by returning to the playoffs the subsequent year and leading the league in wins in 2013. Can’t ask for much more than that. Mozeliak is my choice for the best GM in the game over two other more famous candidates in the elite category.

2. Andrew Friedman, Tampa Bay. Is there any argument that Friedman is this high? He took over in 2005 and within three years had the league’s best record. They’ve won 90+ games four years in a row in the league’s best division. He’s done this despite routinely having one of the lowest payrolls in the game, despite off-loading talent as soon as it becomes pricey, by stockpiling draft picks (11 of the first 75 picks in the 2011 draft), and by signing his key players early on to incredibly club-friendly contracts (see the deals that Evan Longoria and David Price signed pre-arbitration). In fact, I daresay that the success the Rays have had in the draft was a driving force behind richer owners (hello, Mr. Jerry Reinsdorf) pushing for bonus limits on the amateur market. In 2013 the team had the 3rd lowest payroll in the game but still made the playoffs ahead of the Yankees (who spent nearly FOUR TIMES as much as the Rays). Many would say these facts by default put Friedman #1 and I wouldn’t argue; only the drop-off in his farm system this year keeps him from overtaking Mozeliak. Call these two GMs 1 and 1-a.

3. Billy Beane, Oakland. The league’s 2nd longest tenured GM is likely to retire as its longest, since he owns a stake in the team and has re-made his approach to building teams in the last couple of years to great success. This ownership stake affords Beane the job security that he wouldn’t have otherwise, and has afforded him the time he needed to find his next “market inefficiency.” After some lean years following the “Moneyball” period in the mid 2000s, Beane has turned the A’s into a two-time defending AL West defending champion (a division with two of the most profligate spending teams in the game). His new team-building method seems to be around wheeling-and-dealing, and he’s been good at it. He turned over a significant amount of his 2012 team and won even more games in 2013. The ding on Beane may be his farm system; Oakland has struggled to develop players lately and some may argue that Beane’s ranking should be slightly lower as a result. I’ll say this though; being successful in the league when routinely putting out payrolls in the $55M-$60M range (where his 2012 and 2013 teams sat) by default makes you one of the best in my book.

The Excellent

4. Jon Daniels, Texas Rangers. Texas made the 2010 World Series with the 27th highest payroll in the major leagues. That in and among itself is enough to earn Daniels his street cred. However, his 2013 payroll had ballooned to $125M and they got unlucky by missing out on the playoffs by one game in 2013. Otherwise two World Series trips in four years is still nothing to shake a stick at, and the fact that they didn’t win game 6 of the 2011 World Series still amazes me. Daniels’ reputation is on the line though in a big way; his moves for Prince Fielder, for Shin-Soo Choo and for Alex Rios will be tested in 2014. The team will need everything it can get out of its (mostly) home grown rotation thanks to unfortunate injuries already suffered this year (Derek Holland tripping over his own dog). I give Daniels a ton of credit for accomplishing what he did with a $65M payroll; can he continue to do it with a $130M payroll? The bar only gets higher.

5. Walt Jocketty, Cincinnati. I still wonder how he got fired in St. Louis. He made the playoffs 6 years out of 7, including a World Series win. Then the year following he gets canned. In Cincinnati, he inherited a reigning NL MVP Joey Votto but made some shrewd acquisitions (Mat Latos, Aroldis Chapman), and drafted well (including selecting Mike Leake, who has yet to spend a day in the minors). The Reds play in a small market but have made the playoffs 3 of the last 4 years and continue to develop good players (Billy Hamilton and Tony Cingrani being the latest two studs). Jocketty is in a lofty rank now; we’ll see how things go after the loss of Shin-Soo Choo this past off-season and the slight turning-over of the roster we’re now seeing. If the Reds continue to make the playoffs, Jocketty should continue to get a ton of credit.

6. Ben Cherington, Boston Red Sox. Normally I’m really skeptical of GMs for teams with $175M payrolls who have success. But it is difficult to argue with what Cherington has done since taking over the reigns. He completely undid a ton of the damage that his predecessor had done by offloading two horrible contracts (Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez) and one malcontent (Josh Beckett) on the Dodgers and actually receiving prospect value back. He has quickly built the Boston farm system back to where it is one of the best in the game (they have as many top 100 prospects as any organization out there). And they just won the World Series. Cherington loses some credit for the disastrous Bobby Valentine hiring that led to the even more disastrous 2012 season … but he also recognized the faults with both the team and the manager and led a complete 180 degree turnaround. And I laughed at Cherington’s almost comical chasing of closers (as documented in this space in June 2013). But a title erases a lot of criticism. Boston remains well positioned going forward but will be depending very heavily on the fruits of their farm system in 2014 and beyond. If Boston turns these high value prospects into another playoff appearance while driving down payroll, Cherington’s ranking will only rise.

7. Mike Rizzo, Washington Nationals. Rizzo took over for the disgraced Jim Bowden in March of 2009 and had quite a job ahead of him. The team on the field was on their way towards losing 100 games for the second year in a row and the farm system was dead last in the majors. What has Rizzo done since? The team improved 30 games in the win column between 2010 and 2012, the farm system was considered the best in the game just two years on from Rizzo’s hiring (it should be said, thanks to two straight #1 overall picks resulting in two of the most dynamic players in the last 20 years being available to us), and now has two drafts and two off-seasons worth of work under his belt. He has brought a new mind-set to the draft, focusing on quick-to-the-majors college arms instead of nebulous tools-y high school players. He also has managed to work with the sport’s most notorious agent (Scott Boras) and successfully handled the two most high-profile draftees (arguably) in the history of the game. He has completely re-made the Nats roster in the past two years (only 3 members of the opening day roster 2009 team are still with the franchise). I’ve questioned his roster construction at times, feeling like he over-emphasized defenders at the expense of offense (running Michael Morse and Josh Willingham out of town), and he obsessed over a leadoff/CF type until he got one (Denard Span, trading away our best starting pitching prospect at the time), but a 98-win season smooths over a lot of criticism. Other pundits place Rizzo even higher than I have; 7th seems like a good spot to be until we see if this team can get back to the playoffs. If the Nats falter again in 2014 and don’t achieve something in this “window,” Rizzo’s tenure and the 2012 season may be viewed simply as an aberration instead of a well built team.

8. Frank Wren, Atlanta Braves. A couple years ago you would probably have Wren ranked in the middle of the pack at best. He clearly botched both ends of the Mark Teixeira deals, essentially turning Texas regulars Elvis Andrus, Neftali Feliz, Matt Harrison and catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia into a year of Teixeira and Casey Kotchman. Imagine how good Atlanta would be right now if they still had the 3 core members that remain in Texas. That being said, you cannot argue with where the Braves have been going. With middle-of-the-road payrolls and an awful TV deal the Braves have a team with a lot of home-grown talent that won the NL East by 10 games last year. His rotation is young and home-grown (Minor, Beachy, Medlen, Teheran), his team full of home-grown talent (with Freeman, Heyward and Simmons leading the way). And they have the best bullpen in the game. On the down-side, there are questions about some of his recent signings (BJ Upton and Uggla in particular), the farm system hasn’t quite come back from its 2010 rankings (thanks to so much of the talent it generated), and I’m not sure anyone really likes Atlanta’s 2013 off-season. So, we’ll give Wren credit for the past few years and indicate a note of caution going forward.

9. Neil Huntington, Pittsburgh Pirates. I’m not sure if I’ve got him too high, but I’ll say this: after getting Pittsburgh to the playoffs (and a winning record) for the first time in a generation, Huntington has them in the right direction. His moves to build last year’s team were excellent, the team has a ton of home-grown talent yet still has one of the best farm systems in the game, and should continue to be a success in the NL Central.

10. Sandy Alderson, New York Mets. How can anyone involved with the New York Mets over the past 10 seasons be considered a success? Because long-time baseball insider Alderson has done well with what he was handed and has the Mets heading in the right direction. In the past three years their farm system has grown in leaps and bounds, going from the bottom third to nearly a top 5 system. He got great value in trade for R.A. Dickey, has drafted and developed well, and we started to see the fruits of that player development with last year’s all-star game starter Matt Harvey. He’s finally rid of the awful contracts that his predecessor handed him ($43.6M of the team’s $93M payroll last year was dead money to just two guys: Johan Santana and Jason Bay. Almost 50%) and has bought conservatively this off-season while Harvey recovers and more of his young arms matriculate. If the Mets ownership ever decides to start spending money again and this team’s prospects come to fruition, they could be a force.

11. Brian Sabean, San Francisco Giants. Sabean is the longest tenured GM in the game, is unabashedly “old school” and is consistently mocked for his signings and moves. I thought his Tim Lincecum deal was ridiculous, I couldn’t believe the amount of money they guaranteed Hunter Pence, and more than a few people are questioning the Michael Morse deal. San Francisco’s farm system is weak and has been for years (after contributing MVPs and Cy Young winners, it should be said). To all these naysayers I say this: Two World Series titles in the last four years. The goal of every team is to win the title, and his teams have done it twice in four years. The Yankees have one title in the last 15 years. So you have to give Sabean some credit. 11th seems about right. Not too high, not too low. He’d have been much higher had his team not imploded in 2013.

12. Chris Antonetti, Cleveland Indians. Antonelli has subscribed to the same “wheeling and dealing” mechanism for building teams that Billy Beane has done, and it turned a perennial doormat Indians team into a 2013 playoff team. They play in a small market and have an $80M payroll, and Antonelli has taken their farm system from awful to respectable in the last three years. So the system is improving as is the on-the-field product. So far, so good in Cleveland for Antonelli’s tenure. I’m hesitant to push him much higher because i’m convinced the Indians succeeded in 2013 on the backs of several very awful divisional rivals (for example; the Indians were 17-2 on the season versus the White Sox but only 4-15 versus the Tigers, quite a swing for a 90-win team; if they were that legitimate a team they would have been much closer to .500 against their divisional winner). So slightly above the median looks good.

The Middle-Ground

13. Jeff Luhnow, Houston Astros. Three years ago Houston was an 88-loss team with a $90M payroll and the 29th ranked farm system. To his credit, Luhnow has reversed at least two of those factors in a big way; he has cleared the decks of the awful contracts that boat-anchored the Astros under his predecessor. Of course, at the same time he’s turned the Astros into a 110-loss team and, for the first time since the dead-ball era, last place three years running. So what has Luhnow done? Inside of two years he’s gone from the worst farm system to the best on the backs of #1 overall picks Carlos Correa and Mark Appel. Soon they’ll likely add Carlos Rodon to that stable, giving this team a fearsome set of players to roll-out within a couple years. So how do we judge Luhnow? Right about in the middle; he’s set out to do what he needed to do; if his foundation leads to on-the-field success Luhnow will be counted among the best GMs in the game for laying out the roadmap and sticking to it.

14. Brian Cashman, New York Yankees. Some say that just the mere fact that Cashman has survived as long as he has in the shadow of the Steinbrenner family ownership of the Yankees should be proof enough that he is among the best GMs in the game, and certainly higher ranked than he is here. Fair enough. But here’s the inescapable facts: his farm system is deteriorating, the most significant player on the 2014 team actually developed at home seems to be Brett Gardner, they had a $225M payroll last year and didn’t make the playoffs, their rotation will pivot mostly on a 40-yr old’s career renaissance, and their starting 2014 infield played a combined 200 games last year. And they’re being saved only by the grace of Bud Selig‘s hatred for Alex Rodriguez, whose suspension “saves” the team $25M this year (quickly spent on their new “#3 starter” MasahiroTanaka, to whom they guaranteed more than $175M dollars). I dunno; maybe Cashman should be lower. They have made the playoffs 4 of the last 6 years and have a title, and Cashman’s early tenure record speaks for itself .. but at what point do you notice that the team hasn’t done very much since the “core four” have entered their decline phases and begin to wonder if Cashman isn’t just a guy with a big checkbook instead of a good GM?

15. Dave Dombrowski, Detroit Tigers. Lots of on-field success thanks to Dombrowski sticking to his plan; he took over the year the Tigers lost 119 games. It is worth noting that 3 years later they were in the world series. Now he’s gotten them into the playoffs three years running, to which he’s due plenty of credit. But his farm system has hit rock bottom, he’s spending a ton of money, and he’s making very questionable moves. The industry panned his Doug Fister move (even if it seemed to greatly benefit the Nats) and people questioned his Prince Fielder for Ian Kinsler move. They were weird moves for a “win now” team. Perhaps I should give Dombrowski more credit, but his 2013-14 off-season knocked him down a number of pegs for me. If they miss out on the playoffs to an up-and-coming Royals team, he’ll suddenly be on the hot-seat.

16. Ned Colletti, Los Angeles Dodgers. Seriously, how do you judge the job Colletti is doing right now? His team’s payroll went from $95M in 2012 to more than $216M in 2013. He’s got $57M tied up in three outfielders not named Yasiel Puig right now. You almost got the impression that Colletti called up Boston and just said, “Hey, I’ll take every sh*tty contract off your hands right now … i’ve got money to spend and I don’t care how we spend it!” On the bright side, somehow the Dodgers have kept a reasonable ranking with their farm system throughout all of this, but the skill involved with paying everyone on your team $20M/year is close to nil. As with Cashman, I wonder if Colletti is ranked too high even here.

17. Dayton Moore, Kansas City Royals. Other mid-market teams (Oakland, Tampa, Pittsburgh) have shown a ton more accomplishment on the field than Kansas City; why hasn’t Moore’s teams done better? He’s been in his job nearly 8 seasons and the team spun its wheels for seven of them. Signings that didn’t pay off and fizzled farm system talents defined this team for years. Finally Moore went all-in, trading the best prospect in the game (Wil Myers) for a package of pitchers to help the Royals get over the hump. Between 2012 and 2013 they added $21M in payroll and these players and gained 14 games in the win column; just enough for … 3rd place. The industry entirely believes Moore was fleeced by Tampa Bay, and the trade looked so bad at the time that pundits wondered if Moore wasn’t getting some pressure from above to “win more now or get canned.” But it didn’t take Myers but the next season to win the rookie of the year award, and he may be a player that Kansas City fans rue for a generation. I think Moore may not be long for the job, and with good reason; why hasn’t he been able to win when guys like Huntington and Beane have?

18. Terry Ryan, Minnesota Twins. Ryan has been with Minnesota for-ever; hired in 1994. He stepped aside and then was re-hired in 2011, and is now in a rebuilding phase. The team let go one of its faces of the franchise last off season (Justin Morneau) and is going to begin a big youth movement this year. They’re going to be bad, but perhaps not Houston bad thanks to a couple of (odd?) starting pitcher signings. Help is coming; Ryan has built on of the best farm systems in the game and it features two of the top 5 prospects out there (Byron Buxton and Miguel Sano). Perhaps it isn’t fair to rank Ryan here with Luhnow higher, but Ryan was partly responsible for the downfall of this team and the abhorrent starting rotation of last year. But once their MVP-grade talents arrive at the majors, Ryan’s work of rebuilding the farm system should be rewarded.

The Concerning

19. Josh Byrnes, San Diego. Byrnes inherited a 90-win team that surprised but which was getting ready to hit a transitional stage. Byrnes got some good prospects from the Adrian Gonzalez deal and some more in the Mat Latos deal, but they havn’t turned into wins on the Three straight years of 71-76 wins has spirits dampened in San Diego. Now their MLB team looks poor, the farm system is good but drifting, and they’re talking about another rebuilding effort. He’s only a couple years in but things aren’t looking up; his division includes a team that is spending 4 times what he can spend.

20. Kevin Towers, Arizona. So here’s my summary of Towers’ tenure in Arizona so far: he continues to drive away players and prospects who aren’t “gritty” enough for him, trading them for 50 cents on the dollar. His farm system has gone from good to middle of the road. His payroll is rising … and yet his team is winning the same number of games. And yet both he and Kirk Gibson just got contract extensions. Why exactly does anyone think Towers and Gibson are doing a good job right now? How many more games would they have lost had they not magically found a 6-win player in Paul Goldschmidt (an 8th round pick) last year?

21. Jed Hoyer (Theo Epstein), Chicago Cubs. I know Hoyer is the GM, but lets be honest; this is Epstein’s team. The Cubs hired Epstein for him to re-make the franchise as he did in Boston. Except that Epstein left Boston in a huge mess, with a slew of very bad contracts and an even worse clubhouse. Now he’s come to Chicago and made some questionable moves (the Edwin Jackson signing, the Anthony Rizzo fan-boy pursuit, etc) while not making other more obvious moves (why is Jeff Samardzija still on this team if they’re “rebuilding?”). To their credit, they got value for Alfonso Soriano, only one of the most untradeable players in the game. And they’ve gotten a pass to rebuild the farm system, which is now ranked in the top 5 in the game and should start to bear fruit. Now, that farm system is loaded with hitters, and with Wrigley’s comfy stadium the Cubs may be offensive juggernauts in no time, but they still need pitching. How will the Hoyer/Epstein team handle that? Hopefully not with more signings like the Jackson deal.

22. Michael Hill, Miami Marlins. The one huge caveat that goes with the Miami GM job is this: Jeffrey Loria is probably the most hands on owner in the game, and you almost can’t judge this GM’s ability based on who is calling the shots. The only other owner who seems to have as much pull is, ironically, ranked next. Miami loaded up for 2012 in their new stadium and had completely dismantled things before August. Now they’re a $50M payroll team with some superstar prospects .. but a middling farm system and questionable direction.

23. Dan Duquette, Baltimore Orioles. Duquette has had an odd off-season; his owner 86’d two of his signings thanks to questioning the “medicals,” which insiders point out is Peter Angelos‘ method of nixing deals he doesn’t like. Must be frustrating. Instead Duquette is now signing every re-tread FA who can’t find a job thanks to the CBA’s draft pick compensation issues, punting draft pick after draft pick. The O’s did make the playoffs in 2012, thanks to an unsustainable record in one-run games, and have had a decent run of success out of their farm system (Manny Machado should be mentioned in the same breath as Trout and Harper frankly), but are they on the right track to get back?

24. Dan O’Dowd/Bill Geivett, Colorado Rockies. The Rockies have a very unique front-office structure right now, resulting from an August 2012 shake-up that left industry insiders questioning the roles and the message coming from the team. Nonetheless, the direction of the Rockies leaves something to be desired. They’ve drifted on the field, employed questionable starting pitching usage strategies, and generally are treading water. Their farm system is starting to look up though; will that be enough to compete in a division with the Dodgers?

25. Alex Anthopolous, Toronto Blue Jays. Anthopolous took over for the maligned JP Ricciardi after the 2009 season. In the time since, he traded Roy Halladay, acquired Morrow, traded for Escobar and Jo-Jo Reyes, acquired Rajai Davis, and perhaps most impressively offloaded the albatross contract for Vernon Wells. He had an 85-win team in the hardest division in baseball with a 70M payroll for 2011. Then he went for it, emptying the farm system (which was one of the league’s best in 2011) to acquire the likes of R.A. Dickey and the whole slew of ex-Marlins. Now he’s got a massive payroll, an underperforming team and empty cupboards in the minors. All the good work he did to prepare Toronto for battle in the AL east has gone for naught unless last year was just a big huge adjustment period for all these newly acquired veterans.

The Underperforming

26. Doug Melvin, Milwaukee Brewers: Melvin is an interesting case; the Brewers purposely bottomed out their farm system to make a playoff run in 2011, the last year before they lost Prince Fielder and their fortunes would change. And change they have; the Brewer’s player development efforts have not moved off the bottom of the league (their farm system is either last or dead last on every pundit list) while their on-the-field record has dropped (they’ve gone from 96 to 83 to 74 wins in the last three years). Now they’re the 4th best team in their division and it isn’t close, and it is unclear what their plan is going forward. They’ve got quality players at certain places, but have made odd signings (losing their 1st round pick last year to sign Kyle Lohse of all people). You can’t help the Ryan Braun situation, and they got unlucky with injuries (Corey Hart in particular) so perhaps this ranking is unfair. But I still feel like the Brewers are adrift in terms of strategy and thus Melvin’s ranked this low.

27. Jerry Dipoto, Los Angeles Angels. The worst or 2nd worst (along with Milwaukee) farm system in the majors for the past few years. One of the largest payrolls in the league giving them a 78-84 record last year. Over-paying for aging slugger (Albert Pujols) after aging slugger (Josh Hamilton) while inexplicably signing one of the worst statistical starters in the game to a multi-year deal (Joe Blanton) and entering last season with a clear and obvious rotation issue. Dipoto earned the absolute worst “quantitative grade” in my GM ranking xls, trying to measure the three GM factors of on-the-field success, farm system development and trades/FA signings. The only reason I don’t also rank him last is because i’m not entirely convinced that Dipoto isn’t a decent executive who’s being told by a highly-involved owner (Arte Moreno) to sign all these guys. But, there’s really no reason that a team playing in LA and who is spending three times what his divisional rival Oakland is spending isn’t consistently finishing ahead of them in the standings.

28. Rick Hahn (Kenny Williams), Chicago White Sox. What can you say? The White Sox lost 100 games with a $118M payroll last year and have had the worst (or near to it) farm system in the game for years. The White Sox organization is in a bad way, and i’m not sure why Williams’ stewardship was rewarded with the “promotion” to team president. They lost 18 games in the win column from 2012 to 2013 and it is hard to see how they’re going to be any better this year. It does seem though that they are undergoing a “rebuilding effort,” in that their payroll seems like it will be $40M less this year versus last and they’ve moved some of their bigger salaries in “rebuilding mode” moves (Alex Rios, Jake Peavy). So perhaps its slightly unfair to have Hahn so low, if he’s entering into a purposely bad period. Nonetheless; this set of executives got the White Sox where they are now, so their low ranking is earned.

29. Ruben Amaro, Philadelphia Phillies. I’ll admit that i’m probably biased here. While i’ve given credit to other GMs whose teams have had success in the past several years, i’ve not given Amaro the same benefit of the doubt. And that basically comes down to several, clear facts; Amaro has destroyed the Phillies with multiple long-term deals for declining players, most notably Ryan Howard‘s contract (widely considered the worst dollar for dollar contract in the game). His team 3rd highest payroll in 2013 and nearly lost 90 games. His recent FA moves have been laughable (Delmon Young and Michael Young? John Lannan as his sole pitching move last off-season? His ridiculous contract extension for Carlos Ruiz this past off-season?). His heels-in-the-ground obstinant refusal to adopt any understanding or acceptance for analytics or modern statistical approach to his job makes me wonder just how asleep at the wheel his owner is. He’s let his farm system lapse while his on-the-field product falters. He puts out mixed messages in regards to his direction (Cliff Lee mentioned in trade rumors? Are the Phillies going to rebuild or not?). But the coup-de-grace for me is the news that just came out that Amaro’s organization has purposely attempted to sabotage college kids who spurned the Phillies last summer, ratting them out to the NCAA out of pettiness, spite or vengeance. Despite their WS win and appearances in the last 6 years, I cannot for the life of me figure out why Amaro still has a job at this point.

30. Jack Zduriencik, Seattle Mariners. Zero playoff appearances in his tenure. His farm system has pushed out all the talent it apparently has to give and now is in the bottom third of the league with more than a few “busts” (notably Justin Smoak and Dustin Ackley vastly underperforming). A 90 loss team last year, and he’s just gotten done committing hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts yet likely has only improved his team a few wins, thanks to a fundamental lack of understanding of what it takes to build baseball lineups (he seems to be depending basically on 3 rookies in his rotation for 2014). And it seems that Zduriencik not only is poor at his job, but he may have depended on deception (if not outright fraud) to get it, thanks to the reporting of Geoff Baker at The Seattle Times last off-season. One only needs to look at his method of building teams to notice that he has no concept of defensive capabilities and he seems to collect 1b/DH types without consideration of how many runs they’ll be costing him thanks to sub-par defense (Michael Morse and Raul Ibanez at the corner OF positions last year, his plans to play Logan Morrison and Corey Hart in the OF this year). How long before Robinson Cano is a brooding $200M boat anchor on this team as they continue to lose 90 games year after year in a division dominated with better GMs and bigger payrolls? All these facts contribute to my ranking Zduriencik last.

MLBtraderumors ran a poll in April of 2013 where you can vote, and the top 5 crowd-source vote-getters are: Beane, Friedman, Mozeliak, Cashman and Sabean.

The NYPost’s Ken Davidoff ranks GMS every off-season and he came in with Friedman, Beane, Daniels, Dombrowski and Mozeliak in Dec 2013 (he has Cashman way too high, but he is a NY-based writer and focuses on the entire body of work).